Friday, September 4, 2009

Another comment question we get in email is if Solid Framework can convert PDF pages into image files. Solid Framework can be used to convert PDF pages into image files, and we use this feature to create page thumbnail images and the main page view for PDF Navigator. Here is a diagram of how this works:

You can download the sample project [zip file] to see this in action yourself. The project contains both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 solutions. Those without Microsoft Visual Studio can use Visual C# 2008 Express Edition for free to work with the sample project.

Earlier we talked about using a C# class library to allow you to use the scripting functionality of Solid PDF Tools Scan to PDF from the command line. We use this class again to parse out the command line arguments we need to convert the pages into image files:

The code above takes care of setting up the arguments to hand off to DoConversion. So lets say we have a pdf file at c:\mypdfs\pdftest.pdf that is encrypted with a user password of "mypassword" and we want to make JPEG images of pages 1-5, 7, 8 with a dpi of 127 and put these images in c:\myimages. The commandline would look like this:

And there you have it. The requested images should have been created in the specified output directory. Since we are using the free developer trial license, each page image will have a watermark at the bottom if the page. To remove this watermark, read more about an annual license for the Solid Framework Tools Edition here ($250 or $500 per year depending on distribution, no royalties).

Have any thoughts that you'd like to share? Please contact us with your feedback.